A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE professional rumourists who are now hard at work on the Prime Minister and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald leave it to be inferred that there is a definite obstacle to the elevation of the Lord President to the peerage but none in the case of Mr. Baldwin. I wonder. The obstacles, or potential obstacles, are of course, the two Ministers' eldest sons. Mr. Mister MacDonald is a successful architect, and pretty certainly has no desire for his father to take a step which would mean a coronet coming dropping in among his T squares some day. About Mr. Oliver Baldwin I am not so sure. There is no novelty about the idea of a Socialist peer nowadays, and the Prime Minister's eldest son might be content to accept with a sardonic smile what the law of primogeniture brought him. But the case for life peerages is none the less strong. No man ought to be driven into the Upper House or driven out of the Lower House against his will. Mr. Runciman will, of course, inevitably find himself there in the course of Nature, and his whole future political career is determined by that fact. Freedom to decline an inherited peerage would seem to be a citizen's elementary right.
* * * * The Labour victory in the London County Council is very largely a triumph for Mr. Herbert Morrison. Rarely does a leader stand out with such conspicuous predominance above the rank-and-file of his followers. Whether, as Mr. Attlee generously predicts, he will be found some day occupying a position at the Whitehall end of Westminster Bridge analogous to that he now occupies at the Lambeth end is a matter for the future to disclose ; but Mr. Attlee is not the first man to make the suggestion. Certainly the allegation of alliance between Labour and (rather vaguely) " the Reds " did Mr. Morrison no harm. So far from having done anything revolutionary in its first term of office, I was assured by a Municipal Reform canvasser that Labour had " done nothing " and ought therefore to be turned out. Actually the absence of issues left the result entirely open, and it was probably Labour's claim on the resources of such organisations as the trade unions and the co-operative societies that gave it the advantage.
* * * * The appointment of Mr. Naotake Sato as Foreign Minister of Japan is, I think, of good omen. For Mr. Sato, recently as Ambassador at Paris and earlier as permanent representative of Japan at Geneva, knows European diplo- macy and the European mind as few Japanese do. He discharged with singular dignity and courage the thankless task of defending Japan's indefensible actions before the League of Nations Council in the early phases of the Man- churian adventure. So well, indeed, did he play his part that in one of the most brilliant cartoons of those brilliant caricaturists, Derso and Kelen, a dapper and diminutive Oriental figure is depicted orating with outstretched arm while a semi-circle of Foreign Ministers of Great Powers quail round him, each with both hands held up in surrender. But Mr. Saw may not find Japanese Generals so compliant. As Mr. Justice Swift observed, the juryman at Birmingham Assizes who preferred to affirm instead of taking the oath and then objected to using the words " Our Sovereign Lord the King " seems to have been mixing up two different things. People to whom grasping a New Testament and uttering the invocation " So help me God " are acts which do nothing to confirm their resolve to maintain strict veracity may very properly prefer the simple declaration which the law allows them as alternative—" I, A. B., do solemnly and sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." But that is a witness's affirmation. A juryman substituting affirmation for oath is in no way dis- pensed from undertaking that he will " true deliverance make between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar." Nor is there any reason why he should be.
* * * * • If flags are of value as symbols, as they are, and inter- nationalism (of the right kind) is a good thing, as it is, there is an obvious place in the general scheme of things for an international flag, in particular a League of Nations flag, for use on appropriate occasions and for appropriate purposes. I note therefore with interest that the warships of different nations engaged in the new patrol duty off Spain are to fly the pennant adopted under the terms of the North Sea Fisheries Convention. This is a triangular flag, blue and yellow, flown by the fisheries-protection vessels of all signatory Powers—in addition, of course, to their own national flag. It is familiar enough off our East Coast fishing-ports, but has never done such service as will fall to it now. Its adoption for the Spanish patrol may indeed give it a better title to be described as an international flag than any other such emblem—except the Red Cross—enjoys.
* * * * I have to correct a figure, and to some extent revise a judgement, contained in a paragraph in this column last week, regarding Professor Trevelyan's biography of Lord Grey of Fallodon. Not 3o,000 words, but quite 9o,000, are devoted to the political side of Grey's life. That I still think is short measure, but having now finished reading this memorable and most moving biography I can well believe that the author, weighing justly the different sides of Grey's life as Grey weighed them himself; has produced a portrait in which all the proportions are accurate. That still leaves it possible to take the view that there remains room—and need—for a more detailed study of Grey as Foreign Secretary.
* * * * While on the subject of Grey of Fallodon I cannot refrain from quoting from it one of Grey's favourite anecdotes —of the visitor to the Zoo who asked a keeper whether the hippopotamus she was looking at was a male or a female. " I can't say I know, ma'am," was the answer," and perhaps it doesn't matter very much to any but another hippopo-
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